CIAM and CRM integration best practice

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is the beating heart of an enterprise sales team. CRM is the central repository of your customer information. Lead generation efforts create new contacts within the CRM system. These leads are then carefully cultivated into paying customers. The businesses that deal with a handful of customers can make do with Excel sheets or other manual tools, but any business that has experienced the growth to a SME level has likely felt the need to invest in a real CRM solution that allows effective management of leads, prospects, and customers.

CRM systems are used by many different user groups. Sales, customer services, and marketing departments create, modify, update, and remove records in the CRM database. The accuracy of the data in the CRM system has extremely high importance to both sales and marketing efforts of the company.

Inaccurate or outdated information within the CRM can directly translate into inefficiency of your sales efforts and marketing campaigns. The correctness and accuracy of data is a key driver for integrating a Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) solution into the CRM system. A well planned and executed CIAM to CRM integration provides double benefits by improving the CRM data accuracy and quality, while reducing the administration overhead of contact information. A CIAM solution is by design, optimised for identity and access management functions for external users, and can enable a tiered delegated administration model, where the customers themselves have access to self-service workflows for registering, creating new identities, inviting users, and authorizing users. These self-service functions can dramatically reduce the customer service desk costs while improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The quality of data has added benefits beyond sales and marketing. In many cases, the CRM data is being processed with analytic tools. The analysis results are then used as basis for strategic initiatives and operative plans. Poor data quality at the outset is likely to have a negative impact on the quality and effectiveness of these plans and actions.

This white paper linked below shows how CIAM and CRM systems work in concert for best customer experience and highest data quality:

https://www.ubisecure.com/about/resources/customer-iam-and-crm/